


I Lost Two Cities, Lovely Ones

by ishie



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Supernatural
Genre: 2009, 5000-10000 Words, Crossover, F/M, One Night Stand, One Shot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-02-13
Updated: 2009-02-13
Packaged: 2017-10-05 23:57:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/47421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ishie/pseuds/ishie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cleveland is and always has been a shit hole. John doesn't know if the same would be true of a version without a plague of demons and its very own permanent doorway to Hell, but he's pretty sure no one would ever mistake the city for a paradise. He's been holed up in a fleabag motel since he hit town the night before and he knows the city is going to look even worse in the daylight.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Lost Two Cities, Lovely Ones

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cidercupcakes (musicforswimming)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/musicforswimming/gifts).



> [Cidercupcakes](http://cidercupcakes.livejournal.com/) totally broke my brain in awesome ways with this one: _Buffy Summers/John Winchester, R rating or higher, lighter tone _
> 
> For the 2009 [One Night Stand ficathon](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/1411365.html); set several years post-_Chosen_ (BtVS), but still pre-_Dead Man's Blood_ (SPN), with lots of invisible handwaving re: timelines. (Lots and _lots_.) Title from Elizabeth Bishop's [_One Art_](http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15212). Both SPN and BtVS are basically non-fandoms for me, so feedback would be better than a scythe of my own!
> 
> THANK YOU to [Inlovewithnight](http://inlovewithnight.livejournal.com/) for the beta, and to [Inkdot](http://inkdot.livejournal.com/) for [this song](http://www.mediafire.com/?imv4n4ypwlu) ~~and mutual silent judging~~! ♥

Cleveland is and always has been a shit hole. John doesn't know if the same would be true of a version without a plague of demons and its very own permanent doorway to Hell, but he's pretty sure no one would ever mistake the city for a paradise. He's been holed up in a fleabag motel since he hit town the night before and he knows the city is going to look even worse in the daylight.

Two days ago, a letter arrived for him at the garage in Adel, cryptic as all hell. Then again, when weren't they? It hit the right notes, though: girl in danger, evil demons, hunter needed. So he grabbed his truck from the junkyard and headed north - straight up I-75 as far as Cincinnati, then north on 71. He doesn't often take the highways, preferring to lay low on back roads as much as possible, but the message came in an envelope dotted with blood and reeking of sulfur. Just this once, he figured time was of the essence.

He staggered into his motel room as the sky was starting to turn pink at the edges, cast all the usual protections, and poured a veritable mountain of salt around the dingy room. And then he crashed hard.

When he finally surfaced, the sun was sliding down toward the horizon. It doesn't take long before he starts to get itchy with all the waiting. The crappy television has the same crappy shows he's seen on stations all over the country and there's been no word from whoever sent him the message in the first place. He would worry about the quiet if it didn't kind of feel like someone else is keeping the creepy-crawlies away as a favor.

He sits and watches the door for a while, until that gets too boring. Then he shifts to watching the wall but, aside from a water-stain that looks like Cindy Crawford right down to the mole, it's more boring than the door. He buzzes the office to check if anyone's been asking for him but the clerk sounds so stoned that John figures the entire 82nd Airborne could be about to crawl up his ass and he'd never be the wiser. He stuffs a couple of necessities into a bag, shoves his wallet in his pocket, and jumps in the truck.

Downtown is busy, lots of people rushing around in the feeble early evening light. He stuffs his hands in his pockets and tries not to flinch too hard whenever someone knocks into his elbows. He's scanning faces as they pass and picks a couple of potential bad guys out of the crowd, but they aren't hassling anybody so he just takes it easy and keeps walking. He's supposed to be on a job anyway.

He wanders down by the lakefront, looks up at the ugly hulk of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Museum and wonders how many times Dean's taken a job within driving distance just so he can make the side trip. John knows he needs to stop wandering down memory lane and get down to business, maybe try flushing out an old snitch who went to ground down in the Flats years ago, to see if anyone knows why the hell he's been summoned here. It feels nothing like a normal hunt, not even the kind where it takes him an embarrassingly long time to figure out what's what.

There's a prickling sensation on the back of his neck like he's being watched. He forces himself to be alert, to scan his surroundings; there are a couple of tourists gingerly stepping around goose shit on the walkway between the science center and the hall of fame and that's about it. If it weren't for the crackle of paper he can hear whenever he moves, he would think maybe he dreamed up the the letter.

He turns his back on the lake, turns up the collar of his coat, and heads back to where he parked the truck. He's a couple of blocks away when he hears it - a quiet tapping sound coming from somewhere above. He tries to casually scan the buildings but can't see very far up without tipping his head back and giving himself away. Instead, he settles for moving a little faster down the street and wrapping a hand around the knife in his pocket.

About halfway down the block, there's an alley that leads back between a Subway and a boarded-up storefront. He slides into the shadow of a dumpster and pulls the knife from his pocket. There's a couple of things in his bag that might come in handy, but until he knows what he's dealing with, this will do.

He doesn't have to wait long. The tapping echoes from somewhere overhead and he catches a glimpse of the orange streetlights bouncing off of leathery wings far above his head. Definitely not something he recognizes. He's shifting his weight from one foot to the other, trying to figure out if he has enough time to run for it or if he's going to have to go on the offensive, when he sees her.

She's tiny, maybe just barely tall enough to reach the pedals when she drives and dressed up like she's on her way to a party or a dance club or whatever the hell it is that young, blonde girls do on a cold Wednesday night in Cleveland. As he watches, she stumbles on an uneven section of concrete and upends her purse all over the sidewalk. When she crouches down to scoop everything back into the little bag, she teeters a little on her heels and the big brown leathery thing lets out a squawk and dives straight for her head.

John's up and running before the little "Danger! Danger!" sign goes off in his brain. He scoops the girl off her feet and over his shoulder in a really sloppy fireman's carry just as the flying thing's talons hit the spot where she was standing.

And for his trouble, does he get an armful of whimpering, grateful girl? Hell, does he even get a thank you?

No, he doesn't. What he does get is an "Are you _kidding_ me?" in his ear and what feels like a freight train derailing right in his temple.

When he wakes up for the second time that night, he's sprawled across a narrow bed in a pretty fancy room. At least, he assumes it's fancy. All he can see is light coming in from a tall window and part of the ceiling, but it's more than twelve feet above him. He's no expert on architecture but he's been around enough to know you generally don't see that kind of thing in flophouses. He rolls his head to the side to check out the rest of the room and nearly vomits all over the pillow. He gingerly presses on the side of his head where the pain is worst and feels the mother of all goose eggs rising up.

"If you're going to barf, could you at least aim for the trashcan?"

He fights against the tidal wave of nausea that's about to drown him and peers across the room. The girl is curled up in an armchair, her blonde hair haloed by the light outside.

"Where am I?"

"Um, duh? Bed, walls, ceiling? Pretty sure those add up to a bedroom."

He grits his teeth. "Thanks, I never would have figured that out."

She's silhouetted against the window when she stands and he can practically hear her eyes rolling. There's a whisper of noise, metal on metal, and a thunk as she bends down to put something on the floor. His brain hobbles around for a few seconds before it places the sound:

She's got a fucking _sword_.

"Oh, damn," he groans. "You're the Slayer."

"Just _a_ Slayer these days, but wow, you are really on a roll tonight. Maybe you should try out for _Jeopardy_!"

He struggles for some kind of comeback but she snaps on a lamp and the sudden brightness stabs him right in the eyes.

"Sorry," she says, sounding anything but. The bed shimmies a little when she sits down next to his shoulder and pries one of his eyelids open.

From up close like this, once his vision clears, he can see that she's a lot younger than she sounds. He'd guess her to be in her mid-twenties, if it weren't for her eyes. He likes to think of himself as something of an expert at sizing people up and it looks like this girl's seen more than anyone's fair share. She's all big, sulky eyes and pouty lips that make him think the kinds of things he shouldn't be allowed to think about a girl her age, but she has the same weary look that he recognizes from his own reflection.

When she leans over him to check his other eye, her breasts brush against his upper arm and he can see down her shirt almost all the way to her stomach. He feels like a dirty old man but he can't help looking - it's been too long since he's been this close to a woman who's not actually undead or ectoplasmic. Her breath stirs the hair over the spot where she clocked him and he's too woozy to stop the shiver that races through him.

"Doesn't look like a concussion. Too bad: you'll live." She sits back and gives him the evil eye when he drags his gaze back up to her face. "So, assuming you haven't spent the day manhandling damsels who aren't actually in distress: what do you think of Cleveland so far?"

"What, did you give up the lucrative field of slaying to work for the tourism board?"

"Do you think they're hiring? I've always wanted to lure innocent people into harm's way for a living."

"Goes with the territory, sweetheart. If you want to save the world, you've got to offer up your fair share of sacrifices."

He smirks at her for a minute before he realizes that he'd have been better off punching himself in the face. Her eyes have gone cold and flat, and she pushes herself off the bed.

"If you're feeling good enough to be an asshole, you're feeling good enough to get the hell out."

Before he can say anything else or even try to come up with a way to smooth things over, she whirls on one foot, grabs her sword, and slams the door behind her.

It takes a couple of minutes before the room stops spinning long enough for him to fight his way off the bed. Somewhere between the alley and here, she's gotten him out of his jacket. He heaves a big sigh of relief to find it tossed in a pile on top of his bag in the corner, and he nearly passes out when he leans down to pick up both. Outside the room, there's a short hallway - bathroom on one end, wide staircase on the other, a couple of closed doors in the opposite wall - and he hesitates. He can hear her banging things around somewhere downstairs so he heads for the bathroom and locks himself in.

In the mirror, the lump on his temple doesn't look too bad; there's no blood, at least. He splashes some water on his face, grimaces at the three days' worth of beard on his chin, and rummages through her medicine cabinet. She's got about what he'd expect for a Slayer's house - bandages, over the counter painkillers, iodine and witch hazel, some weird shriveled leaves in a plain paper envelope. The sparkly hair things and the box of condoms are kind of a surprise, as are the overflowing makeup bag and straight razor.

He stops himself before he starts sniffing her shampoo like some kind of creep.

By now, the worst of the nausea has passed and a hell of a headache is blooming in its wake. He swallows a couple of painkillers and shrugs into his jacket before venturing out to beard the Slayer in her den. She's obviously plugged into the weird shit that goes down in this city and he's never been one to waste an opportunity. He figures he can make nice long enough to get some answers about the letter in his pocket that burns like an ember against his chest.

Assuming he can find her, that is. The banging noises have stopped by the time he starts down the stairs. He wanders from room to room, and there are a hell of a lot of rooms. He's gone down two staircases and through every door leading off of three separate hallways before he starts to hear signs of life again. He passes through a galley kitchen and an open door into a cavernous room, with mats on the floor and a mouth-watering array of weaponry lining the walls.

The girl is dancing around a punching bag that's at least four times bigger than she is, throwing uppercuts and kicks that look like they could break a man's jaw. John rubs the knot on his head and grimaces. It looks like he got off lucky, for a change.

"I thought I told you to get out."

"Had a couple of questions for you first. Plus, I can't find the door." He grins, ready to amp up the charm but it's wasted on her back. He circles around the room, slowly, trying to get in front of her since she won't turn around. He doesn't have to feign interest as he passes the racks and rows of crossbows, swords, and pikes. If his luck holds out, maybe he'll get a chance to look at a couple up close before she kicks his face in.

"I'm Buffy Summers. This is the North American HQ for the Watchers' Council. The front door is through the kitchen, up the stairs, down the hallway to the left, and through the gallery. You're a little too Inigo Montoya to be worth our time, and you're going to screw up a whole bunch of stuff you don't understand." She gives the bag a particularly vicious kick, right to where its groin would be if it were, say, a John Winchester-sized punching bag. "And you're pissing me off to boot."

"I appreciate the intel, but those weren't the questions I was going to ask."

"They're the only answers I'm willing to give." Buffy punches the bag one last time, a vicious combination that sends it creaking back and forth in a huge arc, then turns to face him. She blows a piece of hair out of her face and says, "Now get out."

John spreads his arms wide, grin plastered all over his face again. "Just five minutes - give me a couple more answers, you never see me again. Win/win for everybody, right?" He really hopes she doesn't just kick him in the nuts and throw him out the nearest window.

"Fine," she snaps. "What?"

"What was that thing that tried to snatch you in the alley?"

"Run-of-the-mill Cuyahoga rust dragon; they nest over in the stadium. And, thanks to you, mama dragon gets to go home to her babies tonight with a belly full of someone's life-force instead of onto a pyre like she was supposed to."

"Shit, you were hunting it?" _Shit_. No wonder she was so pissed.

"Seriously, you should give Alex Trebek a call. You're _really_ good at this."

"I've already got him on speed-dial," he deadpans. To his surprise, Buffy almost cracks a smile. "How did you know I was new in town?"

The almost-smile drops from her face. "We sent for you. It was a mistake."

"How?"

Instead of answering, she rolls her eyes at him and starts stripping the tape from her hands.

"Okay, let's try this instead: why?"

"We've got a lot of Slayers out there fighting and not enough Watchers to keep them in line. Some people on the Council," and the way she spits that part out lets John know she isn't one of them, "thought it might be a good idea to bring some hunters on board."

"And you disagree."

She bristles, and he can practically see the sparks flying off of her. "Of course I disagree, Captain Obvious! It's the dumbest thing anybody's tried to do since they brought back flared jeans! Hunters are a bunch of chauvinistic, misogynistic assholes who go chasing after things they barely even understand and get a lot of innocent people killed along the way. These girls need stability and training, and to be taught to harness their own power rather than relying on a bunch of hocus-pocus and me-lone-wolf macho bullshit that jerks like you will try to pound into their heads."

"That's a load of crap and you know it."

"Really?" Buffy scoffs. "When was the last time you worked with a female hunter? Or in a team? When was the last time you took more than a couple of hours to size up a situation before you went barrelling in?"

"That's unfair-" he starts to protest, but she shuts him up with a glare a drill sergeant would envy. He's almost glad that she does because he has no idea how he was going to argue that one. His approach has always been: act now, think later. If there was time to find a library or consult with a buddy, great, but he didn't go out of his way to do research when the trail was hot. And he's certainly not going to bring up his sons, the team he's broken beyond all hope of repair.

"I'll tell you what's unfair, John Winchester. Unfair is a sixteen year old girl giving up any hope of a future because some big bad demon got away from a hunter who couldn't keep his shit under control. Un_fair_ is watching that sixteen year old girl get dusted because of a miscast protection spell that one of _your_ buddies hurled, one that wound up being twisted into a shield it could use against her."

She's been advancing on him the entire time, and she finishes off her tirade with a shove to his solar plexus. It knocks the wind right out of him and he falls on his ass, hard. Buffy stands over him, hands fisted at her sides, and visibly tries to bring herself under control. He can see a flush spreading up from her chest and her nails digging into the soft flesh of her palms.

John doesn't want to provoke her any more than he has to - that shove freaking _hurt_ \- but he's not about to sit quietly by while she badmouths him and most of his friends. He waits until he can see her breathing start to slow and says, nice and calm, "So what am I doing here then?"

"It was a test, and you failed." She drops the wad of tape on the mat next to him and stalks away.

He pushes himself up off the floor and charges after her. "Now, wait just a minute. No one hunts demons like a Winchester! If your Slayers are in as much trouble as you say, you're not going to scrap this whole idea just because I fell for your helpless girl routine."

"Watch me," she grits out.

He reaches out and grabs her by the arm, trying to stop her from storming out. The idea doesn't sound like much but it's solid and it could work; nothing that could help organize the fight against demons would be a bad idea. Sure, it would take a lot of planning and more than a little bashing people's heads together but if it could turn the tide, he's willing to try anything. But before he can say any of that, he's flying through the air and landing with a hundred or so pounds of incredibly pissed off Slayer pinning him to the ground. His head swims a little when it bangs down on the mat.

"Okay," he gasps, "you're not a helpless girl."

"Damn skippy," she says as she presses a little harder on his wrists.

\--

This was so totally not her most brilliant move ever. She should have just dumped him in that alley and gone after the rust dragon, but the sight of his slack, pale face against the concrete had made her hesitate too long.

She's pissed off enough that she almost expects smoke to come billowing out of her ears, and she wants to grind his bones into powder under her hands. He bucks a little under her, trying to throw her off or just testing her hold, and she almost laughs. He might not realize it yet but he's way out of his league here.

"So what was the plan before I tried my good deed of the day and fucked it all up?" he asks, and lets his body relax and go limp under hers.

Buffy doesn't trust it for a second but maybe he's not as dumb as he looks, after all. She eases up a little without totally breaking her grip on his wrists. "Big strong hunters sweep in and save all the poor Slayers from themselves."

John shakes his head. "No. _Your_ plan."

That kind of throws her for a loop. She's done her homework on this guy - ex-military, drifter with a mostly dead or estranged family, enough time spent chasing the evil who killed his wife that he almost qualifies as a vengeance demon himself - but she never once considered that he'd be willing to see her side.

It's not a fun thought. She's careful not to ask herself what else she's missed.

She lets go and sits back, careful to keep his legs pinned under her still. "Truce?"

Now that his arms are free, he manages to get his elbows under him and sit up. "Whatever you say."

Buffy nods, but doesn't move off of him. There's a whole bag of fun demon-killing toys sitting just a few feet away and Giles would _so_ turn up with a list of I-told-you-sos as long as his arm if she lets this guy get the upper hand. He'd never let a little thing like not talking to her get in the way of a good self-righteous lecture.

"You were supposed to show up and wander around for a while. You know, do your usual: ruffle some feathers, destroy a couple of buildings, wind up bloodied in the hospital. We had a whole rotation set up for keeping an eye on you, but Robin uncovered a new nest in Shaker Heights. He and the girls went out for a training exercise around the same time I took off after old Rusty."

"Wondered why the place seemed so empty." He smiles, not the condescending "let me talk you down from that ledge, crazy lady" grin he'd tried before but an honest-to-God smile that shows the creases at the corners of his eyes.

She's always been a sucker for creases. "And you got here faster than we expected."

The smile flattens out and his eyes get a little darker. She remembers Robin's brilliant idea to appeal to John's protective instincts instead of his sense of duty and it doesn't seem so brilliant anymore.

"So, right, _yeah_," she chirps in her full-on fake cheerleader voice. "I should get you caught up! We sent you the letter. There's no girl in trouble, no specific one at the moment anyway, and a whole city full of bad guys. But we've got them under control for the most part - they really seem to calm right down when they hear I'm back in town."

"Can't imagine why," he mutters under his breath as though she can't hear him when she's less than a foot away from his mouth, straddling him on an exercise mat in a deserted house in the middle of the night.

"Anyway," she continues as if none of that fazes her in the slightest, "my plan was to let you do your Clint Eastwood routine for a while, maybe point you in the direction of a few choice baddies, clean up after you, then convince the Council to come up with a training and recruitment plan that's better suited to the 21st century than bringing in a bunch of barely housebroken hunters. No offense."

"None taken; I've bunked with some of those guys."

And there it is again, that eye-crinkling smile that sends tingles into places that it really shouldn't. All of sudden, she's hyper-aware of his body under hers, of his long legs pressed between her thighs and the heat that radiates from him. She shifts backward an inch or two but he sits up a little farther as she does and now they are way too close for comfort, especially since she needs to be all Business Barbie and not Completely Fascinated by Beard Stubble Barbie.

She hops to her feet and offers a hand to help him up, making sure to stay between him and his bag in case he gets any funny ideas. He comes up off the floor slowly, with popping joints and a groan he just barely manages to muffle.

"It's too bad we're not buddy cops because now would be the perfect time for an 'I'm too old for this shit'," she cracks.

He shoots her an exaggerated dirty look and this time she doesn't stop the laugh that bubbles up.

"Look," he says after a minute, all serious again and she tries to match his expression, "maybe you're right. The hunting's been good on our side but we're too scattered and vulnerable the way we've been working. Any time any of us get together for more than a few days, something real big and ugly starts sniffing around. I've lost a lot of good friends in the last couple of years."

Buffy's not sure how to respond to that. She knows the bare bones of his quest, and his sons', and the air of exhaustion and sadness that he carries on him like a shroud is one she recognizes all too well. Everyone involved in this fight has lost so much, and it's hard to miss the gold band on his left hand and all the things that it stands for. She's struck suddenly by the urge to rip it off his finger and throw it as hard as she can out into the darkness, to lift this one burden from his shoulders. She wonders if she would have ended up like him, like this, if it hadn't been for her friends and Dawn. Her family. Why his sons haven't been able to do that for him.

She doesn't realize that she's still holding on to his hand until he gently tugs it from her grasp.

Now she's flustered, and oh how she really hates that. She claps her hands, wincing inside at how easily she falls back into Cheerleader Buffy when she's rattled. "Are you hungry? The kitchen's fully stocked, and I make a mean omelet."

"I could eat," he says. But he stays where he is and she can't get her feet to move.

"Maybe a drink instead?" she offers. "Or, I could give you the dollar tour?"

"A drink would be good but what's this dollar business? A nickel's more my speed."

"A place this size, you gotta charge more," she tosses over her shoulder as she leads him out of the training room. She puts a little more swing in her step than normal without really meaning to and feels giddy with it.

In the kitchen, he drops his bag on the counter as she snags a couple of beers and pops the caps with her thumbs. He looks vaguely impressed but doesn't say anything, just takes a bottle from her hand. She's caught by the movement of his throat as he takes a long drink and tries to cover by babbling about the house and their training program. They wander from room to room, trading tips and anecdotes about teaching sullen teenagers how to handle a crossbow or to pack a box of shells with salt. She watches the way he moves, the way he holds himself - on the balls of his feet, arms loose at his sides, relaxed but alert and constantly scanning their surroundings.

As he laughs his way through a story about his oldest son's insistence that he could handle the wicked recoil of an AK-47, Buffy's struck by a sudden, furious bolt of arousal. It's orders of magnitude stronger than the low-level hum of attraction that's been building since he woke up in her bed, and so unexpected that she stops dead in the middle of the hallway and just stares at him. John doesn't notice, or doesn't _seem_ to notice at any rate; his attention's been snagged by a glimpse of the rows upon rows of books in the library.

She follows him through the doorway and thinks it's not so strange, really, being drawn to him: like attracts like, the allure of the alpha male, and all that other new age crap that Dawn reads out loud from _Cosmo_ when they've had too much wine after dinner. She watches him pass from shelf to shelf, lips moving a little as he scans the titles. His hand keeps going for a pocket and when it comes up empty each time, he shakes his head, brow furrowed. He lingers over the different versions of _Histoire de la demonologie judaique_, then shrugs out of his jacket and tosses it on the seat of a low-backed chair.

Buffy drains the last of her beer and collects his long-forgotten bottle. The clank as they land in the trash can brings his head up and around like a werewolf who's just scented her on his trail. The thing of it is, she feels like a predator, her blood thrumming hot through her limbs as she catalogs his movements, watches his pupils dilate, and closes the distance between them.

As she approaches, he turns to face her slowly, cautiously. His shoulders are broad and heavy, straining the worn seams of his button-down shirt. As she watches, they tense up and she thinks he might be sucking in his stomach. She's unaccountably charmed by it, the first real sign of vulnerability he's shown since she dragged him up off the sidewalk. He's not a handsome man; his features are too dark and blunt for that. But he wears his age well, with only a dusting of gray on his chin and sprinkled through his hair. She wonders how much his sons look like him or if they favor their mother more.

And then she's right in front of him, close enough to smell the spice of his deodorant and the faint scent of beer on his breath. She watches his pulse jump in his throat, and he brings his hands up to her shoulders then lets them hover there for a moment. He doesn't look like he's sure whether he wants to push her away or pull her in even closer.

She makes the decision for both of them, goes up on tiptoe, and curls her fingers into the front of his shirt.

"I'm old enough to be-"

That is so not a sentence she wants him to finish. "Properly appreciative of my flexibility? Why don't we go with not so much of the talking right now."

She doesn't give him a chance to agree or protest, just pushes herself up another inch or two until his lips meet hers. Her momentum knocks them off-balance and he falls backward against the bookcase behind him.

Buffy's never met a cliche she didn't like, and her first thought is that this is like something out of one of the romance novels she used to sneak out of her mother's room. As his mouth opens under hers, she feels like she's going to sink into him and drown. He's everywhere, filling her field of vision until her eyes drift closed. His arms are heavy around her, one hand twisted in her hair and cradling the back of her head, the other pressing in on the small of her back. She's flying high on endorphins from her short workout but she feels small and soft next to him, not quite defenseless, but close.

It's such an alien feeling that she immediately goes on the offensive to wipe it away. She pulls at the front of his shirt, popping buttons and tearing cloth in her haste to get at his skin. His hand clenches in her hair when she starts pushing the shirt off his shoulders.

John offers almost no resistance when she captures his wrists and pushes his arms up against the bookcase. Once the sleeves have cleared his hands, he grabs her by the waist and pulls her hard against him. She breaks his hold easily and swings them away from the shelves, trying to push up his t-shirt as they go.

Somehow they stumble over to the couch and collapse onto it, shedding his jeans somewhere along the way. She gives up on getting his t-shirt over his head when he gets one hand on her inner thigh, pushes her legs apart, and settles himself between them. She arches her back to press up into the hand he's sliding farther up her thigh, until he's stroking her through the seam of her pants. The steady movement of his hand and his weight bearing down on her start to short-circuit her brain. She plants her feet on the cushion and shoves at his shoulders until she manages to maneuver them around so that she's straddling him again.

He moves his mouth to her neck, then lower, his hands stretching the neckline of her tank top out of the way. His lips move along her collarbone, his beard rasping against her, before he leans back. He looks at her with eyes gone heavy-lidded and dark, and grumbles, "Why don't you let me do the driving?"

Buffy scrapes her teeth over his jaw and starts inching his shirt up again. "I'm not so sure a hot rod like you could handle it."

He smirks, then takes his hands out from under her tank top and waistband long enough to grab the back of his t-shirt and haul it up and over his head. "It's not the years, honey; it's the miles," he says as he tosses it aside.

It's been a long time since her Indiana Jones phase and she still thinks that such a cheesy line really shouldn't work in real life. But it does, so she pulls him in for another kiss, moving his hands back to where they were. His skin is warm and rough, gliding over her breasts and hip, but his ring stays cold. She shivers when it passes over her ribs.

"Condom," she manages to gasp when he shoves her tank top up to her neck. She tries to pull it off without untangling her fingers from his hair. "Upstairs."

In a move she wishes she had the presence of mind to process because it's pretty impressive, he snags his jeans off the floor without lifting his mouth from her skin and fumbles around in one of the pockets to fish out a familiar wrapper. He pulls away from her and holds it up, triumph blooming across his face, and says, "Hope you don't mind me borrowing one."

She doesn't know whether she wants to be pissed that he did or grateful, so she settles for reaching down between them to stroke him through the worn fabric of his boxers, and asking, "Just the one?"

It looks like she's found the magic words. Suddenly John's all hands and clenched jaw and straining biceps, lifting her off his lap long enough to unbutton her pants and shove them down her legs. She moves back and kicks them off, then steps out of her underwear, but before she can do anything else, he's pushing his boxers out of the way and pulling her back over him.

She scoops up the condom from where he's dropped it on the couch next to him and tears open the packet. He takes it from her before she can unroll it, and makes quick work of what she'd planned to draw out until he begged.

"Been a while," he says with a flash of teeth.

Buffy exaggerates her pout and lifts up onto her knees, steadying her hands on his shoulders. He grips her hips in both hands, tight enough to leave marks that might actually take a while to fade, as she lowers herself onto him. Her nails dig into his skin as she tries to set a steady rhythm but her knees slip too much on the leather of the couch. John's not helping, either: he keeps thrusting up into her just a little bit off the beat, just enough to be distracting.

And then it doesn't really matter all that much to her. His thighs and arms tense under her and then he's flipping them over, driving her down into the couch. She lifts one leg and wraps it around his waist, braces the other against the floor. The heavy muscles in his back bunch and smooth out as he picks up the rhythm she'd tried to set and speeds it up, just a little, just enough to make her forget that she'd wanted to move over him until her legs gave out.

She manages to drag her hands away from his back and his arms and works a hand in between them. She brushes it down his chest, scraping her nails against his ribs as she goes. He swears under his breath and pushes himself up, arms trembling, when her knuckles press against his lower belly and her fingers dip lower.

John's head drops heavily to lie on her breastbone and he curses again. She spreads her legs a little wider and tilts up, tightening her leg around his waist so he can retreat only slightly before slamming back into her. She brings both hands back up and threads her fingers through his hair to pull his head back until he's looking her in the eye. Her skin feels two sizes too tight and she feels feral, wild, like she's going to burst if something doesn't give soon. She tries to put it into words, and only then realizes that she's making the high-pitched keening noise that's been bouncing around in her head.

The keening breaks into a gasp when John thrusts harder once, twice, sharp jerks of his hips against hers. He drops down to his elbows, presses his chest into hers. She shudders at the brush of his hair against over-sensitive skin and he opens his mouth over her throat and his teeth trace lightly along her carotid and he grinds his hips against her and hits just the spot she needs and groans her name and she flies apart.

By the time her breathing returns to something resembling normal, they're lying boneless against each other and she feels like she's just coming off a twelve-hour patrol through the Hellmouth itself, but in a really awesome way.

John slings an arm over her and mumbles against her skin, "I'm too Inigo Montoya, huh?"

She musters up the energy to shrug and traces the scars on his shoulder. "What can I say? I'm a sucker for the classics."

The hair on his arm tickles her belly as he chuckles. It's nice, lying here like this, his body crowding hers on the couch as their sweat cools and their pulses slow. She's missed this, all of it, and it's kind of sad that she hasn't noticed until now. She realizes for the first time that part of her dislike for the decoys has less to do with the creepy impostor factor and more to do with the little knot of envy that curls in her gut whenever she hears about Rome.

They're both quiet as they button and zip themselves back into place. She doesn't know what to say, barely even knows what she _wants_ to say, so she settles for slipping back into cheerleader mode, rattling on about this book and that scroll and the demon in Parma. John asks a couple of questions, seems interested in her answers. He doesn't try to talk over her with his own stories or to impart glorious hunter words of wisdom. It feels almost normal, maybe a little weird but also kind of familiar, and familiar is good. She doesn't get enough familiar.

She's in the middle of buttoning her pants and explaining how she came by the scythe when he kisses her again, hard. She tangles her fingers in his hair and holds on tight. Their time is running out; Robin and the girls could come back any minute now, and neither of them has the luxury of withdrawing from the fight for even a day, gracefully or otherwise.

When they break apart, he wraps his arms around her and whispers in her ear, "I have to get going."

Buffy nods against his throat and pulls away. She leads him into the kitchen where she pulls food from the fridge and stuffs it into his bag, ignoring his protests. As they walk back through the house, he ducks into a bathroom for a minute to "see a man about a horse."

While he's occupied, she grabs a pen and paper from a nearby desk and scribbles a quick note. It's handy, having the Council's researchers at her beck and call, even if she's not sure she should be trusted with the privilege sometimes. But he was passed out in her room, on her bed, and he looked so lost and alone that she couldn't and didn't resist the temptation to do a little digging. One quick call home to Scotland and she had a place and a name that might help him on his way.

She tucks the note into his bag, wedged between a box of shotgun shells and an apple, and hopes he won't mind her interference.

The ride back through the city to his truck is quiet. He taps his fingers on his thighs in time with the drums on the radio while she watches the street signs and points out some of the big trouble spots, places where the energies of the Hellmouth leak through. She feels like a tour guide but can't stop herself. When they idle at a red light, she wants to turn the wrong way and drive south. Or west, or east. Anywhere where they can ignore the rest of the world and prolong this whatever it is that they've discovered.

Instead, she parallel parks behind his truck and turns off the ignition.

He gathers up his stuff and pulls a crumpled business card out of his pocket. He lays it on the dashboard and says, "Ellen Harvelle. You want to do this right, get some reliable hunters to help you with the Slayers, you call her. She knows everybody and everything worth knowing."

"John," Buffy calls as he starts to get out of the car. She's not sure what she wants to say next but she doesn't really want to just let him walk away like this.

He brings one foot back inside the car and turns to look at her, an eyebrow raised.

"I spend most of my time at our facility in Scotland. Maybe once you find your six-fingered man, you could..." She lets the sentence trail off and wants to kick herself, feeling stupid for suggesting it. For wanting more. This, right here? This is why she doesn't do these one night stand things.

But while she's beating herself up for it, John's face breaks into that big smile again. He reaches out to squeeze her hand where it's clutching the steering wheel. "As you wish."

And then he's gone, the car door slamming behind him. She sits and watches the glow of his taillights disappear around a corner before she starts the car and drives away.

**Author's Note:**

> Started: 21 January 2009  
> Finished: 13 February 2009


End file.
